08 December 2006

Art vs. the echo chamber

I've always viewed the whole blog phenomenon as something of an echo chamber - blogs are most read by other bloggers. The is illustrated brilliantly in the political blog sphere, where Mssrs Farrar, Carter, Milne, Brown et al seem comment themselves to sleep every night.

Art has been largely remiss from the echo chamber, save for a few occasional forays by general non-art focused bloggers. This seems about to change, with the quiet launch of a couple of blogs by some NZ art world heavyweights.

The great New Plymouth based photographer Peter Peryer has long had a dynamic and comprehensive website, which he set up initially to provide a first lien of defence against barrages of questions from school kids. After a brief hiatus over recent months, his site has reappeared based on a blog platform, and he's clearly embracign the ease of updating that blogging offers. I'm off to Peter's opening at Paul McNamara's in Wanganui tomorrow, so will post a review of sorts in due course. On that there was a great piece on National Radio last Sunday.

More recent converts to online content generation are art world supremos Jim Barr and Mary Barr, with a really interesting and historically valuable collection of observations and mementos Over The Net - no doubt a reference to the cult of table tennis that seems to be entrenching itself in the upper echelons of the Wellington art world. It's interesting to note that nobody has yet posted any comments on this site...

I've also come across this blog - best of 3 - which looks promising, if not still a little green.

I look forward to a stronger dialogue about NZ contemporary art emerging, as these blogs gain momentum and followings, and the edges of the echo chamber get pushed out a little bit further.